Professional Documents
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Unit V Staffing in Software Projects: Then B Is Likely To Result"
Unit V Staffing in Software Projects: Then B Is Likely To Result"
Understanding Behavior
Identify the handling of people
2 approach:
Positivist approach
Based on development of system
Discipline of Organizational behaviour theories “If A is the situation
then B is likely to result”
Interpretivist approach
How software Engineer defined?
Who customize and install package software
Cover the role of ICT business analyst
How successful defined?
The 2 viewpoints(positivist and interpretivist) are both valid and useful in
managing the people in software field.
POSITIVIST APPROACH
Tends to be objective and empirical
Seeks causes for behaviour
Conduct studies that can be generalised to larger populations
INTERPRETIVIST METHODOLOGY
More qualitative
Based on smaller samples
View each consumption situation as unique and non-predictive
Look for common patterns across consumption situations
ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR
The management's action of motivating human beings in the organization,
according to Douglas McGregor, involves certain assumptions, generalizations
and hypotheses relating to human behavior and human nature
McGregor has characterized these assumptions in two opposite views, termed
Theory X and Theory Y.
Theory X
This is the traditional theory of human behavior, In this theory, McGregor has
certain assumptions about human behavior. These assumptions are as follows
1. Management is a process of directing employees’ efforts, motivating them,
controlling their actions, modifying their behavior to fit the needs of the
organization.
2. Without this active intervention by management, people would be passive— even
resistant—to organizational needs. They must be persuaded, rewarded, punished,
controlled, and their activities must be directed.
3. The average man is by nature indolent—he works as little as possible.
4. He lacks ambition, dislikes responsibility, prefers to be led.
5. He is inherently self-centered, indifferent to organizational needs.
6. He is, by nature, resistant to change.
7. He is gullible, not very bright, the ready dupe of the charlatan and the
demagogue.
These assumptions about human nature are negative in their approach, however
much organisational processes have developed on these assumptions.
Theory Y
The assumptions of Theory Y are described by McGregor in the following words:
1. The expenditure of physical and mental effort in work is as natural as play or rest.
The average human being does not inherently dislike work. Depending upon
controllable conditions, work may be a source of satisfaction or a source of
punishment.
2. External control and the threat of punishment are not the only means for bringing
about effort towards organizational objectives. Man will exercise self-direction and
self-control in the service of objectives to which he is committed.
3. Commitment to objectives is a function of the reward associated with their
achievement. The most significant of such awards, e.g. the satisfaction of ego and
self-actualization needs, can be a direct product of effort directed towards
organizational objectives.
4. The average human being learns under proper conditions not only to accept, but
to seek responsibility. Avoidance of responsibility, lack of ambition, and emphasis
on security are generally consequences of experience, not inherent human
characteristics.
5. The capacity to exercise a relatively high degree of imagination, ingenuity, and
creativity in the solution of organizational problems is widely, not narrowly,
distributed in the population.
The assumptions of Theory Y suggest a new approach in management. It emphasises
on the cooperative endeavour of management and employees.
MOTIVATION
The various models of motivation are:
The Taylorist model
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
Herzberg’s two-factor theory
The expectancy theory of motivation
The Taylorist model:
Taylor had a simple view about what motivated people at work - money. He
felt that workers should get a fair day's pay for a fair day's work, and that pay
should be linked to the amount produced (e.g. piece-rates). Workers who did not
deliver a fair day's work would be paid less (or nothing). Workers who did more
than a fair day's work (e.g. exceeded the target) would be paid more.
The implications of Taylor's theory for managing behavior at work were:
The main form of motivation is high wages, linked to output
A manager's job is to tell employees what to do
A worker's job is to do what they are told and get paid accordingly
Weaknesses in Taylor's Approach:
The most obvious weakness in Taylor's approach is that it ignores the many
differences between people. There is no guarantee that a "best way" will suit
everyone.
Secondly, whilst money is an important motivation at work for many people,
it isn't for everyone. Taylor overlooked the fact that people work for reasons
other than financial reward.
3. Affiliation or Social Needs Since people are social beings; they need to belong, to
be accepted by others. It includes friendship, the need to love and be loved,
socializing, etc.
4. Esteem Needs Once people begin to satisfy their need to belong; they tend to want
to be held in esteem both by themselves and by others. This kind of need produces
such satisfactions as respect, power, prestige, status, and self-confidence.
5. Self-actualization Needs This as the highest need in the hierarchy. It is the desire
to become what one is capable of becoming—to fully realizes one's potential and to
accomplish what one is capable of achieving.
Stage 1: Forming
The “forming” stage takes place when the team first meets each other. In this first
meeting, team members are introduced to each. They share information about their
backgrounds, interests and experience and form first impressions of each other. They
learn about the project they will be working on, discuss the project’s objectives/goals
and start to think about what role they will play on the project team. They are not yet
working on the project. They are, effectively, “feeling each other out” and finding
their way around how they might work together.
During this initial stage of team growth, it is important for the team leader to be very
clear about team goals and provide clear direction regarding the project. The team
leader should ensure that all of the members are involved in determining team roles
and responsibilities and should work with the team to help them establish how they
will work together (“team norms”.) The team is dependent on the team leader to
guide them.
Stage 2: Storming
As the team begins to work together, they move into the “storming” stage. This stage
is not avoidable; every team – most especially a new team who has never worked
together before – goes through this part of developing as a team. In this stage, the
team members compete with each other for status and for acceptance of their ideas.
They have different opinions on what should be done and how it should be done –
which causes conflict within the team. As they go progress through this stage, with
the guidance of the team leader, they learn how to solve problems together, function
both independently and together as a team, and settle into roles and responsibilities
on the team. For team members who do not like conflict, this is a difficult stage to go
through.
The team leader needs to be adept at facilitating the team through this stage –
ensuring the team members learn to listen to each other and respect their differences
and ideas. This includes not allowing any one team member to control all
conversations and to facilitate contributions from all members of the team. The team
leader will need to coach some team members to be more assertive and other team
members on how to be more effective listeners.
This stage will come to a closure when the team becomes more accepting of each
other and learns how to work together for the good of the project. At this point, the
team leader should start transitioning some decision making to the team to allow
them more independence, but still stay involved to resolve any conflicts as quickly
as possible.
Some teams, however, do not move beyond this stage and the entire project is spent
in conflict and low morale and motivation, making it difficult to get the project
completed. Usually teams comprised of members who are professionally immature
will have a difficult time getting past this stage.
Stage 3: Norming
When the team moves into the “norming” stage, they are beginning to work more
effectively as a team. They are no longer focused on their individual goals, but rather
are focused on developing a way of working together (processes and procedures).
They respect each other’s opinions and value their differences. They begin to see the
value in those differences on the team. Working together as a team seems more
natural. In this stage, the team has agreed on their team rules for working together,
how they will share information and resolve team conflict, and what tools and
processes they will use to get the job done. The team members begin to trust each
other and actively seek each other out for assistance and input. Rather than compete
against each other, they are now helping each other to work toward a common goal.
The team members also start to make significant progress on the project as they
begin working together more effectively.
In this stage, the team leader may not be as involved in decision making and
problem solving since the team members are working better together and can take
on more responsibility in these areas. The team has greater self-direction and is able
to resolve issues and conflict as a group. On occasion, however, the team leader may
step in to move things along if the team gets stuck. The team leader should always
ensure that the team members are working collaboratively and may begin to
function as a coach to the members of the team.
Stage 4: Performing
In the “performing” stage, teams are functioning at a very high level. The focus is on
reaching the goal as a group. The team members have gotten to know each other,
trust each other and rely on each other.
Not every team makes it to this level of team growth; some teams stop at Stage 3:
Norming. The highly performing team functions without oversight and the members
have become interdependent. The team is highly motivated to get the job done. They
can make decisions and problem solve quickly and effectively. When they disagree,
the team members can work through it and come to consensus without interrupting
the project’s progress. If there needs to be a change in team processes – the team will
come to agreement on changing processes on their own without reliance on the team
leader.
In this stage, the team leader is not involved in decision making, problem solving or
other such activities involving the day-to-day work of the team. The team members
work effectively as a group and do not need the oversight that is required at the
other stages. The team leader will continue to monitor the progress of the team and
celebrate milestone achievements with the team to continue to build team
camaraderie. The team leader will also serve as the gateway when decisions need to
be reached at a higher level within the organization.
Even in this stage, there is a possibility that the team may revert back to another
stage. For example, it is possible for the team to revert back to the “storming” stage if
one of the members starts working independently. Or, the team could revert back to
the “forming” stage if a new member joins the team. If there are significant changes
that throw a wrench into the works, it is possible for the team to revert back to an
earlier stage until they are able to manage through the change.
Stage 5: Adjourning
In the “adjourning” stage the project is coming to an end and the team members are
moving off into different directions. This stage looks at the team from the
perspective of the well-being of the team rather than from the perspective of
managing a team through the original four stages of team growth.
The team leader should ensure that there is time for the team to celebrate the success
of the project and capture best practices for future use. (Or, if it was not a successful
project – to evaluate what happened and capture lessons learned for future projects.)
This also provides the team the opportunity to say good-bye to each other and wish
each other luck as they pursue their next endeavor. It is likely that any group that
reached Stage 4: Performing will keep in touch with each other as they have become
a very close knit group and there will be sadness at separating and moving on to
other projects independently.
DECISION MAKING
Decisions can be categorized as being,
Structured: simple, routine decisions where rules can be applied in a fairly
way.
Unstructured: more complex and often requiring a degree of creativity.
Some mental obstacles to good decisions making:
Faulty heuristics: it can be useful but there are dangers.
They are based on information, stereotypes.
Escalation of commitment
Information overloaded
Group decision making:
With a project team different specialists and points of view can be brought together.
Decisions made by the team as a whole are more likely to be accepted than those that
are imposed. Assuming that the meetings are genuinely collectively responsible and
have been properly briefed, research would seem to show that groups are better at
solving complex problems when the members of the group have complementary
skills and expertise. The meeting allows them to communicate freely and to get ideas
accepted. Groups deal less effectively with poorly structured problems needing
creative solutions. Brainstorming techniques can help groups in this situation but
research shows that people often come up with more ideas individually than in a
group. Where the aim is to get the involvement of end users of a computer system,
then prototyping and participatory approaches such as Joint Application
Development might be adopted.
Obstacles to good group decision making:
It is time consuming
It can stir up conflicts within the group
Decisions can be unduly influenced by dominant personalities
Conflict can, in fact, be less than might be expected. People will modify their
personal
judgments to conform to group norms, common attitudes developed by a group
over time. In fact, people in groups sometimes make decisions that carry more risk
than where they make the decision on their own. This is known as the risky shift.
Measures to Reduce the Disadvantages of Group Decision Making:
One method of making group decision making more efficient and effective is by
training members to follow a set procedure. The Delphi technique endeavors to
collate the judgments of a number of experts without actually bringing them face to
face. Given a problem, the following procedure is carried out:
The cooperation of a number of experts is enlisted
The problem is presented to the experts
The experts record their recommendations
These recommendations are collated and reproduced
The collected responses are re-circulated
The experts comment on the ideas of others and modify their recommendations if
so moved. If the leader detects a consensus then the process is stopped, otherwise
the comments are re-circulated to the experts.
TEAM STRUCTURES
Team structure addresses the issue of organization of the individual project teams.
There are mainly three formal team structures:
Chief programmer,
Democratic, and
The mixed control team organizations
(a)
(b)
Management structure Communication path
The democratic team structure, as the name implies, does not enforce any
formal team hierarchy. Decisions are taken based on discussions, where any
member is free to discuss with any other matters.
Typically, a manager provides the administrative leadership. At different
times, different members of the group provide technical leadership.
Advantages:
The democratic organization leads to higher morale and job satisfaction.
Democratic team structure is appropriate for less understood problems, since
a group of engineers can invent better solutions than a single individual as in
a chief programmer team.
A democratic team structure is suitable for projects requiring less than five or
six engineers and for research-oriented projects. For large sized projects, a
pure democratic organization tends to become chaotic.
The democratic team organization encourages egoless programming as
programmers can share and review one another’s work.
Disadvantages:
Consequently, it suffers from less man-power turnover
The mixed control team organizations
P ro je ct ma nag er
Ju ni or e ngi ne ers
(a) (b)
Management structure Communication path
The mixed team organization, as the name implies, draws upon the ideas
from both the democratic organization and the chief-programmer
organization. This team organization incorporates both hierarchical reporting
and democratic set up.
The democratic connections are shown as dashed lines and the reporting
structure is shown using solid arrows.
The mixed control team organization is suitable for large team sizes.
The democratic arrangement at the senior engineer’s level is used to
decompose the problem into small parts. Each democratic setup at the
programmer level attempts solution to a single part. Thus, this team
organization is eminently suited to handle large and complex programs.
This team structure is extremely popular and is being used in many software
development companies.
Virtual Teams
A Virtual Team – also known as a Geographically Dispersed Team (GDT) – is a
group of individuals who work across time, space, and organizational boundaries
with links strengthened by webs of communication technology. They have
complementary skills and are committed to a common purpose, have
interdependent performance goals, and share an approach to work for which they
hold themselves mutually accountable. Geographically dispersed teams allow
organizations to hire and retain the best people regardless of location. A virtual team
does not always mean teleworkers. Teleworkers are defined as individuals who
work from home. Many virtual teams in today’s organizations consist of employees
both working at home and small groups in the office but in different geographic
locations.
Why Virtual Teams?
Best employees may be located anywhere in the world.
Workers demand personal flexibility.
Workers demand increasing technological sophistication.
A flexible organization is more competitive and responsive to the
marketplace.
Workers tend to be more productive – less commuting and travel time.
The increasing globalization of trade and corporate activity.
The global workday is 24 vs. 8 hours.
The emergence of environments which require inter-organizational
cooperation as well as competition.
Changes in workers’ expectations of organizational participation.
A continued shift from production to service/knowledge work environments.
Increasing horizontal organization structures characterized by structurally
and geographically distributed human resources.
COMMUNICATION GENRES
COMMUNICATION PLANS
A communications plan, in project management, is a policy-driven approach to
providing stakeholders with information about a project. The plan formally defines
who should be given specific information, when that information should be
delivered and what communication channels will be used to deliver the information.
An effective communications management plan anticipates what information will
need to be communicated to specific audience segments. The plan should also
address who has the authority to communicate confidential or sensitive information
and how information should be disseminated (email, web sites, printed reports,
and/or presentations). Finally, the plan should define what communication channels
stakeholders should use to provide feedback and how communication
documentation will be archived as part of the project records.
In some organizations the communications management plan may also include a
glossary of common project terminology that will be used within the project. This
glossary may define and include samples of templates, reports and forms that
the project manager will use to communicate information.
Audience
The project team must identify all audiences that will receive communications. In a
large company, information technology project communications delivered to
technical and development teams would vary widely from information provided to
senior management, middle management or administrative staff. Other examples of
various audiences within a large organization would be staff appointed to conduct
end user testing or to write end user documentation.
Information Needs
Whether communications are distributed only to technical or functional teams, or
address a wider audience, each message delivered should be prepared for a specific
target audience. If a number of different audiences with different needs exist, the
content of each message should also be varied for the intended recipients. An
example in information technology would be communications of technical
specifications that would be delivered to developers. This same information would
not be delivered to all end user systems testers, only those responsible for
documentation.
Media
Though electronic communications such as email may be the most efficient means of
communication, it is not always the most effective in communications of project
information or to deliver training. The project team should also consider newsletters,
video feeds or webinars. Group presentations and town hall meetings to provide for
question-and-answer sessions can also be provided to communicate project goals,
user training or project results.
Timing
Communications for any project should start in the planning stages. Though the
initial phases of communication will not be as robust as those near the end of a
project, the initial step of broadcasting planned changes to any infrastructure or
process is critical to receive buy-in from all parties. Information flow should be
handled by the project team in coordination with senior management of an
organization. This coordination is to define what information is to be delivered at
various points during project progression.
Responsibilities
The project team may be responsible for all project communications, or a corporate
communications unit could be called upon to provide assistance. However
communications are handled, specific communications tasks should be assigned
starting in the planning phase of a project. Though roles may change during the life
of a project, a plan for delegating communications duties must be crafted in advance.